


Life

by Albiona



Category: The Eagle | Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: Gen, Older Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 23:05:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Albiona/pseuds/Albiona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cottia and Esca are old and spend the afternoon talking. (Marcus is dead.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Seascribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seascribe/gifts).



A young woman in a blue mantle combs through the thin white wisps of her grandmother’s hair. The elder woman sits in one of the two chairs in the room, beside a square table made rough by years of familial use. 

Esca carved the comb before the girl was born, rubbing the wood with fat and oil to seal it and make it shine. He’d offered to make another, as had Marcus, but Cottia always refused. She likes this one, the swell in the bird’s breast along the handle, the life of the vine as it curls beneath the bird’s feet and stretches across the whittled teeth. The vine itself had been foreign to her in her mother’s home and in Calleva, but it grows along their villa’s walls and beside the fountain. Even now, the scent drifts to her through the two doors to the courtyard, though she cannot see so far as their cascading purple blooms. 

The girl, Aurelia, has tender, cool hands in the warm morning. She works quickly, persuading knots into soft curls, though not as long or vivid as they once were. When Cottia feels her granddaughter pause, she looks to the door. A bent, lean man is supported by a young one. She frowns at the veins in the elder’s neck and arms, the way he shuffles, being led to her. 

She’s glad to see him. 

“Old man, sit down,” Cottia fusses, turning her wrist toward the other chair. He wears an open expression as he sits. “You make me tired, looking at you.” 

“And you are beautiful still,” he mutters. She laughs. 

“The gods will strike you one day for your lies, Esca.” 

“I should lie more. Hasten the process.” 

Esca’s grandson has come to make eyes at Aurelia while their old people visit. Cottia knows the girl likes him because, as yesterday and last week, Aurelia is no longer working through her hair, just playing it beneath her fingers. 

Taking her spoon, always near, Cottia swats behind her and catches Aurelia’s arm. 

“Finish the plait, girl,” she says. Pliant fingers pick up again. The grandson, Vitus, keeps his arms crossed and leans against Esca’s chairback. She can feel his very deep voice tripping over the lowest edge of her hearing as he speaks to Aurelia and so, to tease the girl, Cottia squints at him. 

“What are you saying, boy? Speak loudly!” She waves the spoon for effect. 

“Forgive me, lady,” the boy says, easily heard now. “I ask about your day.” 

Oh, how he lies! Romans have taught the boy to be polite instead of true. She glares at Esca. He should have prevented this in his progeny. He should have known not to allow Marcus to have his Roman way so many times. Esca holds her gaze, so she does not argue. 

“Mostly I sit around and look at the walls,” she says. “What have you done in your day?” 

“I branded two new ponies.” 

“No one told me this,” Esca turns to see him. “Which two?” 

Chestnut manes and long hair hides, the talk of horses meanders between these men. Cottia learned when still a young bride that she did not wish to know all that men had to say about horseflesh. 

The comb again at her ends and her plait is finished. Cottia squeezes Aurelia’s fingers in thanks, just a bony pressure on the girl’s hand. 

Both men curl their shoulders as they strain their necks toward one another, eyes blue as the sea she once saw. Esca used to be as tall as Vitus, lean and upright, a strong lad. Marcus was always a bit taller, even limping, even stooped. This boy does not remind her of Marcus. None of the young lads remind Cottia of Marcus. 

The girl moves around so that her grandmother can see her. Graceful, the fox in her features, her brow smooth in confidence and clarity of will, Aurelia is rare. 

When Marcus died, Cottia found her family looked extraordinarily like him. Her daughters all have Marcus’s coloring, the tans and browns of a Roman-close homeland, and her sons resemble in face, attitude, and height, though they be fair as her. 

After Marcus’s pyre and the keening of so many who loved him, she’d walked out the villa and north into the high woods, the sharp shades. Esca and her second oldest son convinced the rest of their kin not to send riders after her. She returned late the following day, trembling, walking past her own gate to Esca’s. Observed but uninhibited, she strode to his chamber and sat beside him on the bed. She traced the blue tattoos through his shirt, leaned her head against him, and wept. 

A man like Esca would be a good husband for Aurelia, as there are none like Marcus for her. 

Cottia waits for the horse talk to finish. When Esca stretches his hands as though he reaches for his tack again, the old woman touches her girl’s arm. 

“Fetch the baskets and see to the yard,” she says, nodding through the doors. “Take Vitus for the tall boughs.” 

Aurelia nods her head respectfully and smiles, impish and familiar. Both make motions of deference before they leave, when the boy follows the girl through her home. 

After they’ve gone, Esca speaks. 

“Of all our daughters and granddaughters, she reminds me most of you.” 

“When I was a girl,” Cottia amends. 

“When you thought you were a woman.” 

She cuts the air with her spoon. 

“Iwas a woman,” she insists, remembering how frightened she’d been their first nights on this land, how she’d fought to hide it from her husband and her friend. “Marcus thought so. He married me.” 

“I always felt there was a bit of the witch in you.” 

The corners of his mouth are turned up. Cottia laughs. 

“Aurelia is a girl,” Cottia says. “And she is like me.” 

“My grandson likes her.” 

“Neighbors marrying is not a distant thing with us.” 

“No,” Esca says, withdrawing into himself, touching thumb to thumb. “It isn’t.” 

He lost his wife Paulina to a winter cough six years ago. He does not like to say her name. She had been of Hispania, steady, but excitable and a touch mischievous. Having travelled north with her widowed mother and new stepfather, she lived in Clausentum. On a trading trip, Esca saw her carrying fruit from the market. He tripped at the sight of her, and within a month he sat before their fire with Marcus, whittling and talking of building another villa. 

Paulina and Cottia were like their two combs. Coming together, teeth at teeth, they might have slid easily into companionship or pushed apart sharply into discord. Neither state tended to last long, but Cottia had loved her and, in recent years, has found herself remembering even their angry days with whist. 

Casting her dim eyes through the door, Cottia fancies she sees the waxen dark hair of Paulina’s grandson bending over to drop fruit into Aurelia’s basket. The curled reddish hair of her granddaughter glints as gold and bronze in the sunlight. 

Cottia fancies many things she can no longer see. 

The old man has begun to doze. Cottia lays the curve of her spoon on his forearm and rubs at the blanket covering him. When he doesn’t wake she rubs harder and says his name. 

When that doesn’t work she sets her leg on his chair and pushes. 

He jerks, head rising slowly. 

“Vitus?” 

“He’s still in the courtyard. Stay awake and talk to me.” 

“Is there’s something we haven’t said?” 

“We can say something again.” 

Esca frowns at her. 

“If there is a thing you want said, you should do so now. One near day I will not wake when you want me.” 

“No,” Cottia pounds her crumpled hand on the armrest, throwing her spoon to the floor. She would blush if her face had the blood to spare. As it is, to Esca, she resembles the moon. 

Esca raises an eyebrow. Vitus’s laughter rolls to Cottia like a lapping in a pool but is too faint for her friend. 

“Don’t leave me, too,” Cottia says. “Not yet.” 

“I will welcome death.” 

“No. Don’t—not like Marcus.” 

There’d been almost no warning. Days, only. Their children had not even time to come. But Esca, having risen early as his custom, saw their villa’s strong fires and stirred his family. He and his grandsons and son walked with blankets round their shoulders, Vitus leading their fattest sow, to seize Marcus’s hand and speak once more of old days. 

“Do you think him missing?” Esca asks, knobby knees trembling a touch in some breeze Cottia cannot feel. “He built this villa.” 

“So did we,” the woman says. Esca nods, eyes fixed upon hers in an unusually fervent gaze. 

“As long as it stands,” he says, “we three will stand.” 

Cottia wishes one of them had a grandson who looked more like Marcus. 

She used to marvel when her second son surveyed a room, squinted at his sword’s thin edge, bit the citrus dwarfed by his wide hands. She liked to see them together, Marcus and his second son, for all their physical similarities. Yet there is no such young man now. And her son lives west of Sorbiodoni, on land given him after he left the Legionnaires. 

The gods have not chosen to bless Cottia with an image of Marcus in her aged years. 

“Can it stand forever?” she asks her friend. 

“To all our kin who know us, yes. It can.” 

He coughs, rasping and shallow like a knife scraping the underside of a new hide. 

“I don’t resent your peace, Esca. But I do not want to be left alone. Not forever.” 

“It would not be forever.” 

“Not for years. I will be the oldest one I know and alone.” 

It is unconscious, Esca’s touch of his notched ear. He rarely speaks of the days before he was Marcus’s slave. In Marcus’s memory, they were friends at the beginning, but even Cottia remembers that that was not true. 

“You could go, too,” he says quietly. 

He thinks of his mother. She consented to her husband cutting her throat because the alternative was impossible for her to bear. 

“This is not war,” Cottia answers, caught between anger and uncertainty, as if she did not hear him well and fears overreacting. 

“No,” he agrees, and yet he allows his suggestion to hang. His eyes remain fixed upon hers. 

She chose Marcus, and Esca, too. She was alone before, at Calleva. Knowing and caring for Marcus helped bring her joy and peace. Cottia does not believe that she will meet another such person. She is not naïve. 

She is not a girl. 

“I will not,” she declares with all her old petulance. “You must delay until I am older.” 

“Were my wishes always the price paid for yours?” 

He peers at her, genuine in his confusion. 

“Were they?” she asks, the same. 

“I can’t remember.” 

A sidelong glance. They both grin. 

Cottia smoothes the folds in her mantle and draws it closer. 

Esca rubs his hands. 

“Will you be alright?” he asks. 

“Yes. I’ll miss you, when you go.” 

A loud splash from the courtyard. Cottia starts and makes to rise. Esca, reactions still quick, leans around to look behind him. Vitus and Aurelia’s youngest brother are breathless, laughing at Aurelia, her hair and her mantle dripping beside the fountain. She must have been leaning in to wash the fruit and slipped on the stones. Esca grins and reaches a hand to ease Cottia. She listens hard as she sits again. Aurelia rushes into the next room, covering her red face with her hand, shouting once at her brother. 

The hot air feels good to Cottia. Esca shivers less. It’s easier for her to breathe. 

Vitus calls to Aurelia from the yard, soothing and amused and placating. She’s too angry to be generous, yet. 

Cottia smiles. She takes the comb from the table and traces the vine, the bird with her fingers. 

“I’ll lead the keening for you,” she promises. He nods his thanks. She’ll also give him back the gift in her hands. Her eldest son will whittle her a new one. Plain, as he does all things. But it will be all she needs. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry to have written Marcus as dead before the start of the fic, but I wanted to show the strength of Cottia and Esca's relationship independent of Marcus. Also, one of the three of them had to go first. Considering Marcus's past injuries and the hard life of a farmer, I thought it most likely that he'd pass before the others.
> 
> Merry Christmas Seascribe!  
> Also, thanks deeply to KW for helping me develop the idea and for beta'ing.


End file.
